Thursday, January 23, 2014

Tuesday, January 28th, The Idiot will give another State Of The Union address. I can't decide if I'm going to drunkblog it or not.

Most of what he's says will prove him guilty of this economic fallacy:

Hide and watch. The man has never created a dime of wealth on his own, he's never grown anything, never created anything that he could trade for your money except a storybook of his own glorious life.
As a lawyer and as a politician, Obama's career choices have been in fields that are about taking things by force - through the courts or at gunpoint.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, are now filthy rich.

They supposedly give a lot of their money to Democrat and (LOL) "progressive" causes. I don't hold that against them.

I think they deliberately lowered their Blogger/BlogSpot (their program that powers this site) search rankings so that conservative/libertarian voices will be muted. I don't hold that against them any more.

Their house, their rules.

Because they were allowed to get filthy rich, my world is a better place. I've taken on a new job in purchasing, and therefore I search the crap out of everything via Google. Sheet metal. ABS plastic. Janitorial supplies. 1/4-20 hex cap bolts. Extruded aluminum F-channel. You name it, I'm looking for it, and Larry and Sergey help me out.

Here's why I'm writing this..... I got a weird-assed email from a Chinese vendor today, and it referenced some earlier conversation that was in Chinese.

20 years ago, this would've been a huge problem. I don't read Chinese very well. But I just went to "Google Translate", copied and pasted, and there you have it. It's not perfect, but it made sense. Here's what I got, kinda sorta. Mandarin Chinese is on the left, English is on the right. What everyone wanted to say, but couldn't, is at the top:

(Victor says that according to Allen Patterson, Frank is supposed to deal with Victor's next consignment shipment. Allen thinks you can work it out. This is probably Allen's way of dumping his responsibilities onto you. Please let me know you got this and send a return receipt. That way, the monkey is on your back.)

Just as an FYI, Frank (who speaks perfectly good English because he's from Missouri) later said that Allen Patterson shouldn't dump this problem at Frank's door, and that Allen and Victor should work it out through other channels, namely, some other vendor.

Larry and Sergey have done some good stuff. They've made some wise decisions about which fields of online....."stuff"....(sorry, I'm very old) to invest in, and which stuff to avoid.

This was a New Deal abortion that declared that if a big business didn't immediately plow its profits into dividends or wages, any profits could be taxed at up to 27%. (This is a tax rate that most of us would now kill for, so please up it to around 75% to put it in perspective.)

What if Larry's and Sergey's profits, every year, had been taxed at 75%? Well, they would have hidden the money, unless they had something they could immediately pump it back into. To hell with planning, to hell with putting some aside for a rainy day, and to hell with research and development. It Google couldn't invest it in dividends or wages, Obama was going to get it to spend on the Democrat Vote Farm.

What is Larry and Sergey were subject to the 90% tax rate that American Lefties always claim grew the Middle Class back in the 1950's ? (Nobody paid 90%, by the way. There were loopholes in the tax code.)

What if they'd been required, at gunpoint, to "give something back"?

What if Larry and Sergey had been forced to end "income inequality" by giving their money to Crack Whores?

What if Larry's and Sergey's money had been used to fund Obama instead of Google Translate?

I'd still be wondering what the hell Victor's email meant. If there was such a thing as email. If there was such a thing as the internet (and no, politicians didn't invent it). If there was such a thing as a computer. If there was such a thing as a cell phone.

The best way for us to get great stuff at a low price is to allow the Larrys and Sergeys to get filthy, stinkin' rich.

Good for them. And guys, thanks for inventing Google Translate. Or to put it into Mandarin Chinese....

Monday, January 20, 2014

If I see one more Rent Seeker trying to get more money for the Democrat Party Vote Farm by pointing out income inequality, unequal growth, and comparisons of The Golden Age Of Disco to now, I'm going to lose my damn mind.

Yes. The bottom 10% of the lowest quartile has not done as exponentially well as the upper quintile of the top 1%. Or something.

This disparity will only increase with globalization, and I'm glad of it. Bill Gates has done far more for me than I've done for him. This also applies to office personnel in Korea and Shanghai who use Bill Gates' software.
Gates make money in ways that Henry Ford couldn't touch. Very few Fords made it to Korea and Shanghai in Henry Ford's lifetime.

Justin Bieber sells well in Russia and in Jerusalem. Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale" who died in 1887, did not.

But I digress.....

Here's one of the only charts that matter. Male earnings are in red, female in blue. Bachelor's degrees are at the top, less than a high school diploma is at the bottom.

Look upon this, and despair.

Let's take it a notch higher, shall we?

Paul Krugman had a column in today's issue of Pravda about "The Undeserving Rich". (Paul Krugman's net worth is now around $2.5 million. And unless worth is generated by flip-flopping around like a catfish on a riverbank, Krugman is truly undeserving of his millions.)

Disregard that people generally don't wake up in one income percentile and stay there for their entire lives.
Disregard that there is a 20% chance that you will, for one year of your life, be part of the Top 2%.
Disregard that America's poor have higher incomes than the average European.

Here's the income change from 1979 to 2012, according to Mishel and Gordon. This is on the front page of the piece linked to by Krugman.

But, thanks be to God, you can hit the little button on the right and take a look at what has happened since "The Greatest Government Orgy Of Recovery And Jobs Spending In History" took place.

Despair some more, O Ye Keynesians.

That's all I've got.

Hope you finish school. Don't get pregnant to someone you're not married to, and don't get married until you're about 25. Don't become an alcoholic or a drug addict.

Abide by that, and you have a 98% chance of escaping poverty.

Unless, of course, Barack Obama decides to help us some more. The Porkulus Package, Cash For Clunkers, the Green Scams, and most all legislation of the last 5 years were for the rich, and not for you.